Too many wimps in Tony’s team

When
Tony Abbott
said he wanted more sport and less politics in Australia’s newspapers,
Miranda Devine
snapped to attention. A fortnight ago, the Sunday Telegraph columnist developed a new theory of political leadership: it’s all about sport.

Like
Julie Bishop
, Devine believes Abbott’s greatest attributes can be seen in the change rooms. He’s the perfect captain-coach: a sharp-minded strategist, a Churchillian motivational speaker and even a dab hand on the rub-down table.

His role in guiding Sydney University Rugby Club’s fourth-grade squad to a premiership in 1986 gave the budding PM “priceless insights into bringing the team with you".

With the smell of liniment in my nostrils and the sound of jockstraps clicking into position, I felt inspired to contact Abbott’s protégés and ask their recollections of the great man’s style.

“Abbo’s game plan was pretty simple," one of the Uni veterans recalled. “He relied on three-word slogans like ‘Stop the Props’ and ‘Axe the Backs’."

Related Quotes

Company Profile

Another said the tactics were designed to scare people. “Before a big game in May, Tony said we faced a rugby emergency and if I didn’t Axe the Backs, my hometown would be wiped off the map."

“It was a pretty macho set-up," a third player remembers.

“The only female who made it into the dressing sheds was a blonde chick called Julie – a token strapper. The coach said a Greek girl named Sophie would be joining the squad but she never made it."

Survival of the fittest

For Devine, writing about her leadership theory on September 22, nothing beats being a sports-minded bloke. Men have an advantage over women because “they are programmed from childhood to harness personal ambition for the good of the team; they learn to submit to the immutable rules of a sport".

In this Darwinian world – literally survival of the fittest – “little girls are just as keen as boys on team sports, yet fewer are given the chance to play and to learn the lessons which are an unspoken requirement of high office".

Devine credits little Julie Bishop’s success to captaining “her netball team at St Peter’s Collegiate Girls’ School in Adelaide". What happened to the thousands of other netball captains around the country we do not know. Maybe they ended up writing dopey columns for Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph.

Whatever the case, Devine’s thesis is bad news for the Abbott government. The best sportsperson on the Coalition benches is the incomparable JA – John Alexander. He wasn’t fumbling around with alcoholic fourth-grade rugby teams in the 1980s. He was leading Australia’s charge in the Davis Cup, teaming up with heavy hitters like Phil Dent and Kim Warwick.

That’s real teamwork, real leadership, forged in the cauldron of elite, international competition. Look out for a JA coup in the near future.

What about the rest of this hopeless-looking cabinet? It has too many passengers, weak pasty types who, as young fellas, spent more time in the church choir than at the bottom of rugby rucks. This is what brought
Kevin Rudd
undone. Now Abbott has stacked his cabinet with half-men like
George Brandis
,
Christopher Pyne
and
Kevin Andrews
.

A new standard

Imagine the missed opportunities. Abbott could have promoted the big three:
Shane Warne
as Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Wayne Carey
to look after Home Affairs and, to really shake up the Canberra bureaucracy, a new Minister for Public Service Performance Enhancement,
James Hird
.

With all the hoo-ha about not enough women in cabinet, Abbott should have made two other merit-based appointments:
Candice Falzon
as the Minister for Sportsmen and Jana Pittman-Rawlinson-Pittman-Rawlinson as Minister for Family Services.

Devine has set a new standard for Australian political leadership. She must look back on
John Howard
as a joke. His most memorable sporting effort was to almost break his toes while “bowling" a cricket ball in India.

On the Labor side, Devine has it in for
Gough Whitlam
. The big man reckons the only sport he ever competed in was rowing – the perfect preparation for politics, as it involved facing one way while moving in the opposite direction.

The Sunday Telegraph column also revealed a different side to Miranda, who normally presents as a prissy north shore matron, a yummy right-wing mummy. In eulogising Abbott’s footy career, she is obviously a big fan of his après-rugby social life, the highlight of which was being arrested for defacing public property. After a big night on the squirt, Abbott and his mates attacked a street sign. Unfortunately, a police patrol car was sitting on the other side of the road.

Australia’s Prime Impersonator

University rugby didn’t teach Abbott about leadership. It taught him how to be a Tarzan-type figure, a wild man swinging from one confrontation to another. Since election night he’s been playing the role of a born-again statesman, but it’s just an act – Australia’s Prime Impersonator. Deep down, he’s still a cut-loose, take-no-prisoners kind of guy.

If sport is good at teaching politicians how to muscle up, why weren’t other ruffians included in the first Abbott cabinet? Surely I should have been the Minister for Transport to sort out customer service issues in the taxi industry. Even Gough could have come back, in recognition of the night he hurled a glass of water at Paul Hasluck. One of Abbott’s old ministerial colleagues,
Amanda Vanstone
, aka Aunty Jack, also has a lot to offer: to rip their bloody arms off.

I never thought I would say this, but Miranda Devine is a creative thinker. She has come up with the craziest theory in the modern history of Australian politics. And her emphasis on violence is spreading. I showed her column to three otherwise mild, middle-class suburban mums and each of them said, “I just want to punch her."